Canning, Jamming, Crafting & Cooking…always up to something

Experiments with Gin

June 30, 2010

Gin is officially a grain alcohol infused with juniper (required) and other herbs and spices (optional). Learning this blew my mind! I needed to try things out. Not Martha experimented with two recipes here and here, and I used some of her comments to advise my own process. I think a big reason to make your own gin is that everyone has personal preferences and this allows you to make exactly what you want. This is why I applied SCIENCE to the process! I made 6 small batches to try out different recipes and variations.

To begin, a trip to the spice store. I stopped by Penzey’s Spices in Grand Central, and was directed instead to Kalustyans, which, i have to say, is a mecca for all things spice-related. I will be back for sure, and I highly recommend anyone in the New York area (or if you are visiting) to check it out! There I picked up typical gin spices- juniper, coriander, cardamom, bay leaves, orris root, and angelica. Allspice is also common, but I already had some at home and so I didn’t buy any.

Lots to play with...

Husband Josh and I busted out the food scale and some mason jars to make 6 microbatches of about 300 mL each. Scaling down the recipes proved to be a bit difficult to maintain exactness (how to you get 20% of a cardamom pod?) but I think it should be close enough. Here are the recipes I used, scaled down for 300 mL each:

Lots going on...ice coffee is not going into the gin, but was an important part of the gin making process (it was really hot out...)

I might be doing it this weekend- I needed to block off a fair amount of time to handle trying 6 different gins. I will post asap once I do (and will likely have more experiment ideas once we try them all).